Wednesday 12-02-2020 - 13:54

Ábel Bede looks back at Hungarian Society’s Christmas gingerbread event.

 

Having only been founded in 2017, Durham University Hungarian Society is a young student group. That does not mean, however, that we lack tradition. There are two set events each year without which the “HunSoc” calendar would not be complete. Of course, as you would expect from a student group, both have something to do with food. To distract us from the gloominess of the gloomiest of months, and in preparation for our similar Carnival event this term, it’s time to look back at our Christmas event from December.

 

Every year at the end of first term, the society congregates in a member’s house to make an insane amount of decorated gingerbread and drink some home-made mulled wine. Eszter, HunSoc’s baking-guru always pays close attention to accommodate participants with food allergies, so there were two types of gingerbread, one of which was gluten-free.

 

It's not all about gingerbread!

The focus is not entirely on the gingerbread, of course. The last weekend of term is always a good time to catch up with friends, reflect on the past few weeks, or just have a nice chat with someone new while making and decorating gingerbread. It also helps to put our members in the mood for their trip home. HunSoc’s Christmas event is a nice transitional period from hard-working university life in England to the joys of Hungarian meals at home with our family. Hungarian Christmas music certainly helped create a familiar atmosphere.

 

The event wasn’t open to just Hungarians, of course. Because of the event’s chilled and welcoming nature, many from outside the society heard of the event and were happy to join us. This lead to an especially good time with improvised Latin Social Dance and some unexpected reunions from move-in-day.

 

Looking back over the first three years of Hungarian Society...

 

On a personal note, given that this is my last year in Durham, it is also a good idea to look back on what we achieved with HunSoc in the past three years. Even though Durham has had a significant Hungarian student population since the early 2010s, there was no official society until the start of the 2017-2018 academic year. That summer three of our founding members (two of whom graduated last year, the third might be an aforementioned baking-guru), had the idea to found HunSoc and bring the Hungarian community together.

 

Most of us who were members of the first exec had reservations initially, but they disappeared rather quickly. Since then, we’ve had several film screenings, social events and day trips. Some of our events were bigger, like the annual collaboration with another society with invited speakers. Some were smaller, like a bar crawl to commemorate the 1848 revolution, but these were no less enjoyable.

 

Finding "HunSocness"

 

In fact, it’s probably the smaller events that give HunSoc its “HunSocness”. Multiple deep friendships and connections were forged during cooking sessions or regular meetups and it is partially through these friendships that we could expand the boundaries of what Durham University Hungarian Society can be. It is the achievement of every single one of our members that form a small friendship circle, we expanded to have a stall at the Freshers’ Fair every year, put on high-quality events regularly, and attract more and more prospective Durham students to our open events back in Hungary. I hope the fact that HunSoc’s current president is someone who was not even in Durham when we originally founded the society is a sign that HunSoc is here to stay long after the founding members have graduated.

bers have graduated.